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When bluster ends in capitulation, what do other negotiating partners see? Blood in the water.

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, surely absorbed the lesson from the Trump administration’s recent dealings with China. He saw how rashly President Trump waged trade war against China and how rapidly he retreated at the first sign of serious resistance.

Kim thus took the administration’s implied threats to his life in stride. He waved aside Trump’s demand that North Korea agree to give up its nuclear weapons before talks even commence. All Kim had to do was say he might cancel the planned summit with the president, and the president took it all back.

The problem goes deeper than weakness made more pathetic by bellicose tweets and insults. Trump really doesn’t know how to negotiate.

If Trump knew how to negotiate, he would not have let national security adviser John Bolton run his mouth about applying the “Libya model” to Kim. That was a reference to the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who was killed by a NATO-supported militia even after he gave up his nukes.

North Koreans describe their feelings for Bolton as “repugnance.” Trump disavowed Bolton’s comments but didn’t have the guts or smarts to fire him.

Did Trump truly think that his pot-banging threats on trade would force China’s proud, aggressive and increasingly rich leaders to cave? Obviously, they didn’t. All they had to do was threaten American farm exports to their country, and Trump promptly shifted to reverse.

After Trump boasted that China offered to cut $200 billion from its trade surplus, China announced that it had made no such promise. America’s valid complaints over China’s trade practices, meanwhile, have gone largely unaddressed.

During the “negotiations” in Beijing, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and his top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, were heard loudly cursing each other out in the hall. That must have made an impression on the Chinese negotiators calmly laying out their strategy.

A month ago, the president’s own Commerce Department properly slapped sanctions against ZTE, the Chinese communications giant. ZTE was found to have illegally shipped products to Iran and North Korea. ZTE depends on American components. Denying access to them would devastate the company, but this was a matter of our national security.

Then Trump turned tail. He issued a cringing tweet May 13 about wanting to save Chinese jobs. He said he was working with President Xi Jinping to help ZTE “get back into business, fast.”

But after lawmakers from both parties condemned the turnaround, Trump turned around again. He said that the U.S. had not agreed to suspend the penalties on ZTE. Who knows what tomorrow’s tweet may bring?

As for North Korea, Trump’s agreeing to meet Kim was itself a concession. The only thing Kim has done in return was release three American prisoners he had kidnapped to begin with. In response to this puny gesture, Trump all but led a victory parade down Pennsylvania Avenue.

The air of desperation thickens by the day. How else to account for the administration’s batty idea to issue a commemorative coin for the summit? It shows Trump and Kim facing each other and labels Kim “Supreme Leader.”

So much for “fire and fury.”

And so what does Kim see? He sees Trump’s poor skills at effectively applying pressure. He sees China feeling more cocky and less sensitive to U.S. demands to push him along.

The fear among many national security experts now is that Trump will give away the store for the appearance of having brought peace to the Korean Peninsula. After all, Kim plays poker, too.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com.To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

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With a deranged narcissist in the Oval Office and his lackey controlling the Department of Justice, there is no point in looking to the federal government to curb police violence. Instead, President Donald J. Trump will do everything in his power to encourage it. In the wake of protests over the murder of George Floyd, he has demanded that governors crack down on protestors: "You have to dominate. ... If you don't dominate, you're wasting your time," he told them.

Moreover, most local police authorities are under local control -- mayors, city councils, district attorneys, police chiefs, sheriffs. That's where the accountability for police misconduct begins.

<p>But Congress could take a significant step toward reining in that misconduct by passing a bill to end the practice of allowing the Pentagon to give surplus war equipment to local police departments. There is simply no good reason for police in any city -- from Washington to Wichita -- to roll down the streets in armored personnel carriers, armed with battering rams and grenade launchers. They are not going to war. American citizens are not enemy combatants.</p><p>Several Democrats have already announced their intention to introduce legislation to end the practice. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, has said he would introduce such a measure as an amendment to the all-important annual defense policy bill -- which would give it a decent shot at passing since Republicans are deeply invested in the defense bill.</p><script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
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</script><p>After protests broke out in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 following the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer, local law enforcement authorities took to the streets in armored carriers, further inflaming tensions. They showed little inclination toward restraint or de-escalation. The same thing is occurring in cities around the country right now.</p><p>Off-loading surplus military hardware to local police departments was never a good idea. The practice started back during the 1990s as violent crime peaked and local and federal authorities were feverishly devoted to winning the so-called war on drugs. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the program ramped up, doling out battlefield gear even to small towns no self-respecting terrorist ever heard of.</p><p>Law enforcement agents became enamored of images of themselves decked out like soldiers on special-ops missions. According to <em>The New York Times</em>, the website of a South Carolina sheriff's department featured its SWAT team "dressed in black with guns drawn, flanking an armored vehicle that looks like a tank and has a mounted .50-caliber gun."</p><p>Poor neighborhoods are subjected to the military-style hardware much more often than affluent ones. And the consequence of that sort of policing is often less safety, not more. When the police behave like an occupying force, the residents return the favor -- treating them with suspicion and contempt. That hardly makes it more likely that police will get the information they need to solve crimes.</p><p>The administration of President Barack Obama understood that and curbed the Pentagon program after Ferguson. In the final years of the Obama administration, the Pentagon reported that local law enforcement agencies had returned 126 tracked armored vehicles, 138 grenade launchers and 1,623 bayonets, the Times said. Pause for a moment just to consider that. Why would any police department -- even New York City's army of 36,000 officers -- need bayonets and grenade launchers? Once you implant in the heads of police officers the notion that they need battlefield gear, their use of violence against unarmed citizens escalates as a natural consequence.</p><script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
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</script><p>But guess what happened when Trump took office? He removed Obama's restraints on the Pentagon program, once again allowing local law enforcement agents to go to battle against the citizens they are sworn to protect. No surprise there. In 2017, Trump gave a speech in which he urged police officers not to worry about injuring a suspect during an arrest.</p><p>Police violence against black people is a problem as old as the nation itself. It didn't start with Trump's presidency and won't end when it's over. Rather, the racist culture that is embedded among so many law enforcement agencies showed itself clearly when major police unions enthusiastically backed Trump's election. When Trump is finally gone, the campaign to eradicate that culture can begin in earnest.</p>